Professional exterminators, home and business owners, and maintenance personnel commonly place pest control equipment around the exteriors or interiors of buildings to control, monitor, or exterminate pests. For example, pest control stations may be placed around the exteriors of buildings to control rodents or other pests. Such pest control stations typically include a durable outer enclosure configured to prevent or at least discourage unauthorized persons from opening the enclosure and contacting materials inside. Such tamper-resistant enclosures often house pest control products such as toxic or non-toxic bait, adhesive trapping devices, toxic or non-toxic powders or liquids, killing devices such as snap traps, and/or live trapping devices. The enclosures are configured to permit rodents or other pests to enter the enclosure, and to access the pest control materials or devices inside.
Particularly when such pest control stations are placed outdoors, pest control products contained within the enclosures may degrade due to high internal temperatures and/or high internal humidity. For example, edible pest control bait can melt from excessive heat or can mold from excessive humidity, thereby rendering the bait less edible and less effective against targeted pests. The prior art includes pest control stations that are tamper-resistant to humans and accessible to pests, but such known stations fail to adequately address the issue of maintaining or prolonging the effectiveness of pest control materials within the stations.
For example, known pest control stations are believed to have outer surfaces with a surface reflectance of less than or equal to about 0.3. Therefore, the outer surfaces of known pest control stations are believed to absorb at least about 70 percent of all infrared solar radiation that impinges upon such surfaces, and thereby permit substantial radiant heating of such stations. The phrase “infrared radiation” as used herein refers to thermal radiation situated outside the visible spectrum at its red end (i.e. radiation having a wavelength from about 700 nanometers to about 1 millimeter). In addition, known pest control stations include enclosures with thin walls having extremely low thermal resistances or R-values. The R-value or Resistance-value of a material is a measure of the material's resistance to heat flow. Therefore, the poorly insulated enclosures of known pest control stations do little to prevent the conduction of heat into the stations.
Accordingly, there is a need for a pest control station that protects persons against undesired contact with the contents of the station, while also moderating the internal climate of the bait station to prevent or at least minimize degradation of the contents. More specifically, there is a need for a pest control station that effectively moderates maximum internal temperatures within the station. In addition, there is a need for a pest control station that effectively moderates maximum internal humidity within the bait station.